Music and Medicine: being in the moment.

Tim Dornan,Martina Kelly

doi:10.15694/mep.2018.0000197.1

Abstract

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. This article reviews the relationship between music and medicine, informed by our own personal experiences, and by leading scholars who have opened up music and medicine for critical reflection. Performing music, we suggest, is a state of being, in the moment, with fellow musicians and audience members. This establishes bidirectional communication, which can transport both parties to better places. Medicine is, likewise, an act of being with patients, whether or not performing a technical act (a clinical procedure, for example) is part of the interaction. Subjective, non-verbal, dimensions of the interaction engage both parties' senses. Good doctors, like good musicians, tune in to patients at a personal level. The limited research that has examined the relationship between music and medicine shows that music can help students develop auditory skills. Of potentially greater interest is the existential contribution music could make to medical education. We suggest that this could help students and doctors reflect on their experiences of being in the world, and how shared experience can relieve suffering.

Highlights

William Osler, who is remembered as a physician of the highest stature and a great humanist, said doctors should be well versed in the classics; he said that good medical practice is both an art and a science.(Bliss, 1999) The link between the classics and the humane practice of medicine was so self-evident to Osler that he felt no need to justify his advocacy for medical humanities in fine detail
We have argued, are states of being, in the moment, with other people
Musicians do not ‘do’ music to their audiences, but engage in simultaneous, two-way communication that can transport both parties to better places

Summary

Introduction

William Osler, who is remembered as a physician of the highest stature and a great humanist, said doctors should be well versed in the classics; he said that good medical practice is both an art and a science.(Bliss, 1999) The link between the classics and the humane practice of medicine was so self-evident to Osler that he felt no need to justify his advocacy for medical humanities in fine detail. It takes us to heights of experience that, alone, we could not reach It is surprising, though, how little curiosity the medical profession shows towards the kinship between music and medicine, apart from making the ‘epidemiological’ observation that many doctors are musicians. Skilled diagnosticians do not isolate sound from other sensory experiences; rather their heightened listening is integrated with their other senses.(Maslen, 2016) Anna Harris described this beautifully in her ethnographic study of learning to play percussion instruments. This includes the patient’s posture, facial expression, sound of breathing and pulse Their proficient physical examinations are co-ordinated and smooth – their physical responses to their patients are orchestrated movements of body and mind as a form of bodily understanding.(Merleau-Ponty, 1962) Whilst listening and hearing, touching and feeling, clinicians’ objective and subjective experiences merge in a sensescape of healing.(Classen and Howes, 2006)

Conclusions

Notes On Contributors